Love in the Ice
by pinkiethebandit
Summary: Jack liked to watch people. When he wasn't having fun, of course. Sometimes the two would run together, like the colors of dawn and sky. (Set long before he was a Guardian.)


Disclaimer: I do not own Jack Frost or anything else that looks familiar to a certain animation studio or, incidentally, any authors or broadcasting companies. I will not use this story or any of the characters in it to profit in any way. I'm just practicing my writing and hoping for a little advice on what works and what doesn't from a wider audience than I usually have access to.

* * *

Jack liked to watch people. When he wasn't having fun, of course. Sometimes the two would run together, like the colors of dawn and sky.

Not today though. Today he was just watching. People sweeping dust and stray snow flurries out their doors, people chatting by the village well, people rushing about their business. Some of them acted with purpose, some did not. On a whim he followed one of the more determined-looking rushers, hoping there might be something fun in his path. There wasn't. Jack lost interest when the man entered the cobbler's shop, pointing emphatically to his shoes. Jack didn't have much use for shoes, especially when they didn't even have the decency to spill their owner on his bum and give everyone a good laugh. Mainly Jack.

Next he tried the lord's house. At first he thought the yard empty.

"Catch me, sluggards!" came a gleeful shout from behind him. A boy of perhaps fifteen, wearing a fine red cloak barreled through him, a gang of his richly dressed fellows giving chase.

Now this would be fun. Jack tumbled after them, a smile already tugging at his cheeks. They turned a corner, and so did he a second later. The smile withered.

"Well, what do we have here?" The gang of lords' sons had pulled up short and formed a ragged circle around a snared rabbit. It was still with panic, but for the tiny heart beating in frenzy. "Oh, we'll have some fun with you," the boy snickered. The harsh planes of his cheeks framed cruelly glinting eyes.

Anger kindled in Jack's heart. He tapped his staff against the hard ground. Ice shot out from the spot and under the boy. The terrain here was sloped just enough to lend itself to Jack's will. The boy's leather boots lost their purchase and suddenly he was flying down, away from the rabbit. His gang followed suit, landing in a hollow fifty feet away.

"It's alright, darling. I'll get you out of here." He froze the tether anchoring the rabbit, then crushed it with his staff. Free, the rabbit raced for the trees.

He cast a last, dark look on the boys, now on their feet again, before catching the wind and riding it away from this awful little village.

* * *

The wind carried him north, to a manor house by a river. His wanderings had brought him to this place before, but in those days the manor's lord and lady had a tiny daughter. There was no sign of her today. Shame, he'd thought to give her a merry time out in the snow, like in the old days.

Today was not a good day for watching people, or for having fun either, Jack thought glumly. Shoulders hunched, he walked into the woods aimlessly, thinking the silent trees better companions than people, at least for now.

But, alas, even silence was not to be granted him. Up ahead, near the banks of the frozen river, sat the daughter of the manor house. She was talking animatedly to…a snowman.

"…only for a second and Uncle Luke took that gorgeous apple pie right out of the kitchen and Cook was none the wiser. Now she's mad at Aunt Tracy for it, isn't that a hoot?"

Jack chuckled, perching on his staff beside the snowman. "Yep, it is, little one. Not so little anymore, though, eh?" It must have been longer than he thought since he last dropped in on this manor. The tiny daughter was now a lass near grown at thirteen or so years.

"I thought maybe I should tell Cook, but she's such a scary lady. Like the furies in the old Greek tales."

"Oh, I remember that cook of yours. She was young when I first glimpsed her, but even then I knew enough not to disturb her kitchen," Jack answered when the snowman didn't.

"Besides, Uncle Luke shared the pie with me; Aunt Tracy wouldn't have, unless I threatened to tell Cook." She pouted up at him, worried. "Do you think I should tell Cook? Aunt Tracy's terribly upset about the whole thing."

"Nah, you don't need to tell Cook. It's more fun to watch Aunt Tracy squirm."

She smiled at him. "Oh, Jack, I thought that's what you'd say. After all, you yourself are always about, causing mischief."

Jack was frozen. "Little one, are you talking to me? Can you see me?" he asked excitedly.

His little one kept smiling…at the snowman. She'd named the snowman Jack. All the excitement flew out of him. He half-listened to her continued prattle but no longer responded.

It wasn't fair. Not only did this rude snowman get her undivided, adoring attention, she'd actually given him a name. His name. Meanwhile he, the real Jack, didn't get so much as one teeny glance. A pox on whoever made Jack such a common name.

Still, she spun her stories with all the enthusiasm and fancy of a child's eye, and that was gift enough after such a disheartening day. By the time she was called in by her nurse, Jack felt lighter. He blew a flurry up around her, and she laughed delightedly.

"Emily, hurry. It's time for dinner."

"I'm coming, I'm coming, Alice."

* * *

He came back several times over the next year or two. Time was so fluid for him, and he didn't want to miss the rest of her childhood. Usually he played with her but often just listened to her stories instead. As time wore on, they became less fanciful but not less entertaining. She had a number of friends among the village girls and also at court, and between them they were frightfully good at ferreting out the juiciest gossip in all the isle.

"Oh, I've got a good one today, Jack!" she giggled, setting the snow head back on its snow shoulders. The real Jack was tempted to give it another solid kick, but he refrained so he could hear the story.

"Lady Marian is alive!" She paused to let the news sink in.

"What?! But I thought she was poisoned the night before her wedding?" Jack cried, aghast.

"It turns out she took some sort of potion that gave the appearance of death to the taker so she could _elope_ with that bandit everyone's been talking about! Robin Hood! Can you believe it?" Her hands were thrown up high in the air, her face a scandalized mask.

"No! How could she?!" He tried to keep a straight face, he really did, but one huff escaped and then another and soon he was doubled over laughing.

"I don't blame her. That Robin is a dashing fellow," she said dreamily. Mischief lighted in her eyes. "Maybe I should have named you Robin instead of Jack."

That shut him up.

She laughed. "Don't worry, Jack. 'Twas but a jest."

It better have been 'but a jest.'

"They've made him a lord, that he might wed her true. Or so my romantic's heart likes to think. In truth there was some great stir regarding bloodlines and property and murder or some other such nonsense. I paid scant attention to that leg of the tale."

Jack was smiling again. Little Emily had grown to be quite the comic. And quite beautiful, he thought, noting appreciatively her rosy cheeks and long, dark curls.

She flopped down on the white ground and sighed. "When will I find my dashing bandit, Jack? Or lord or blacksmith or cobbler. I'm not picky." She smiled up at him, and her eyes all but disappeared. "Then again, who needs bandits and lords and cobblers. I've got you, faithful friend. What say you, Jack, now that I am a woman proper, will you be my love?"

Her words, flippant though she'd loosed them, struck at him, and a chord resonated. It was deep but faint, as if it came from a long way down. Slowly, he knelt in front of her, reached out a hand to tilt her chin, that he might look into her eyes of cloudless sky. His fingertips passed through, dropped to his knee. She touched the spot with her own, surprise registering on her lovely features.

He was full, swollen with he knew not what. It was pain but not. And thunder. And want. He wanted to…something. Slowly, very slowly, he leaned toward her, gently drawing the warmth of her breath inside of him, tasting it, luxuriating in a tender fire that burned sweet. Far too soon it dissipated, engulfed by the ice of his soul. He wanted more.

"Emily," he said, voice unwontedly low and husky.

"Emily!" Her face whipped back towards the house.

He rose with her, watched her hair drift gracefully in the wind like the tail of a kite.

* * *

He left that night, after yet another one-sided conversation with the Moon. There'd been fewer of those in recent years, but this one made up for it. He didn't come back to the riverside manor for days. He'd intended to stay gone for a long while, maybe forever but he found that he couldn't. He knew too well how fleeting were the days of Emily's life.

He waited for her in the gray and white woods every day now. Sometimes she came, and they had a grand time, rolling in the snow or chatting like before. She would betimes call the snowman her love. It irked Jack, but he knew that he was the one who made her laugh and shout in delight, not that inanimate clown whose head kept mysteriously falling off.

But sometimes she didn't come. One day, he sculpted a rose out of ice to pass the time. He wanted to give it to her, to see the marvel in her eyes and know it was he put it there. He held onto it for a moment, then laid it down in a spot where the thin sun of late winter leaked through the trees. Arms hugging his knees and chin tucked, he watched it melt drop by drop. He couldn't give it to her. Emily was too old to accept something so wonderful without questioning how it came to be. She might be alarmed by it, perhaps think her private retreat invaded.

For truly he was an invader. He had been but an unseen playmate when she was a child, but now…it would probably be best if he did not return to this place after this year, Jack thought. Pain, unequivocal this time, throbbed in his center. He closed his eyes against the onslaught.

He waited for her one more day. When she didn't come, he left. Winter came early to the southern continents that year.

* * *

"Spring dawns early this year," Lord Alan boomed jovially at the celebration dinner. "An auspicious start to the growing season, and a fitting gift for my daughter's 16th year."

The guests sent up a great cheer that shook the walls, but Emily cringed under her gracious smile. Her birthday was supposed to be in the winter. She loved the winter. She liked spring well enough too, but she always spent the first part of it missing Jack.

Alice, of course, knew about Jack. She was the only one who did, and she allowed Emily this one childish indulgence, for the most part. Except in early spring, when he left (Emily refused to say he melted, even in her own mind). Every year, she would suggest that it might be time for Emily to let go of her 'imaginary' friend. Oh, Emily knew he wasn't real, not in the way her flesh and blood friends were real. But he was, in a different way. And she was real, with him. More so than with anyone else. Alice couldn't see that, though. She didn't have enough belief leftover from childhood.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice rising above the general din of revelry. "A toast to the beautiful lady of Riverside Manor! May she finally taste the honey of the sweet bond of marriage in this, her 16th golden year!" Renewed cheers and clashes and spills filled the hall. When they subsided, to a degree that is, the man continued, "My lord and friend Alan, what think you of my own strapping lad?"

Her father gave him a ruddy, considering look; fortunately he was not yet so drunk that he would promise away his only child, last remnant of his beloved wife, over a tankard of mead in a smoky party hall. "My girl is young still, and I love her too greenly." Emily snorted, a rather unladylike thing to do, when the hall rumbled with guffaws.

For all that she swooned over tales of romance, she was loath to 'taste the sweet honey' herself. She only hoped her father could keep the circling wolves at bay until…she grew up? By all reckoning she was grown already. Until Jack storms in and sweeps me off my feet, she thought with an impish gleam in her eye that went unremarked.

* * *

The impatient proposals came daily for a time after the celebration. Lord Alan turned down one and all, until the letter from the Queen came at the height of summer. It had been brought to her attention (by that spiteful pig Lady Helena, no doubt) that a fair maid of the north had not yet been matched with a suitable noble husband. In all her magnanimity, Her Majesty arranged that Emily be betrothed to the second son of the lord whose lands adjoined the Riverside holdings. At his daughter's entreaty, Lord Alan delayed the union until late autumn, when he was seized by a sudden illness. He did not recover.

* * *

Jack had no intention of returning that winter, but a volatile wind took him there anyway. The dull throbbing that now accompanied him in all his wandering intensified when he saw that there was no snowman by the river. She must have outgrown him. He sat on the ground to wait anyway. He didn't know how he knew she would come but he did.

She used to fly into the clearing on silver wings of laughter. Now she trudged. She sat down in front of him, and the breath was stolen out of his chest. She was as beautiful as the day he last saw her but thinner, without the bloom of glorious dawn in her cheeks. The pall of a death not her own and something more sinister, something beyond his comprehension, dimmed her.

For a long while she did not speak. "What happened to you, little one?" he whispered.

"I've missed you, Jack," she said at length. She hung her head. "I'm sorry for letting Connor hurt you." Tears sprang to the corners of her eyes. Silent sobs shuddered down her back. "'M sor-ry for let-ting him-hurt me."

His arms lifted helplessly. Never had he ached so much to be able to hold someone.

She cried and cried, and so did he, frost glazing the fresh snow around them. The sky was stained violet when she stopped. "I should go soon, Jack. But I don't want to. I feel so alone without you and Papa."

The tears fell once more, cutting off with a terrified gasp when a man's voiced rent the evening hush, "Emily! Where are you, we have company!"

The harsh voice rang eerily familiar to Jack. He stood between Emily and the newcomer, staff gripped tight, trying to place the cruel, angular features. A fine red cloak and a richly dressed gang fanning out in a ragged circle. It was the boy from that miserable village south of here.

"This is my wife, boys. Shall we have some fun, dear?"

Emily trembled violently. She was still on the ground with her arms wrapped tight around herself. Jack's teeth clenched, the grip on his staff painful. He raised it in warning, but the man took a heedless step forward. Jack swung the staff wide and ice exploded into existence on the ground, forming a dangerously slick ring with Emily safe at its center. The man and his fellows slipped, but this time the slope of the land didn't end in a hollow; it ended at the river, swift with remembered autumn.

Jack watched it swallow them grimly. Emily sobbed, purging herself of the fear. The sun dropped lower, almost gone.

He bent to whisper urgently in her ear, a hand hovering over the curve of her spine. "You're safe now, little one. You have to go. It's almost full dark." He summoned a little breeze to probe gently at her back. She shivered. "See, you'll freeze out here. Go."

She rose, still shaking. He guided her over the ice, then stood at the edge of the ring watching her hair drift in the wind.

She turned back to face him. Crystal tears still adorned her cheeks, and in some ways she was more beautiful than ever for it. He etched the sight into his immortal memory. She opened her mouth, and his heart ached like never before at the soft words. "Thank you, Jack."

* * *

Author's Note: How was the pacing? I tend to rush things when I write, I hope I didn't here.

I'm sorry about fudging Jack's timeline. It was all in the name of the story.

Thank you so much to anyone reading. This is my first time sharing a story here. I hope it wasn't too horrible.


End file.
